"he (Tayshaun Prince) gets used up by every scoring three in the league, and has his worst
offensive games against them. That is the spot on the floor that needs
the biggest upgrade."

The immediate reaction is an indignant one. How dare you criticize Prince's defense, did you not see the block?

But let's think about this rationally: is it possible that Prince is an overrated defensive player? He certainly has the hardware of a lock-down defensive player, with four selections to the NBA All-Defensive team, but let's look at what the stats say:

Defensive Rating:

This is a fairly straightforward stat, points allowed per 100 possessions. It's not a perfect measure of defensive ability (no stat really is perfect in the NBA). At its best, it simply tells you how often one player allows his opponent to score. What it doesn't do, and we'll see it in Prince's stats, is account for how good a team's help defense/shot-blocking inside is.

League leaders are usually in the low 90s in D-Rating. League average is about 105-106 range. We'll just look at six of Prince's seasons, as his rookie year didn't really count since he played sparingly:

2004: 98

2005: 104

2006: 106

2007: 107

2008: 106

2009: 110

His best defensive seasons, not surprisingly, were 2004 and 2005, when Larry Brown was coaching and Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace were at their defensive, shot-blocking bests inside. The funny part is, during Prince's best defensive season by this measure, 2004 when he was among the league leaders in D-Rating, he did not make the All-Defense Team. He did every year from 2005-2008.

So in six seasons, he's had two seasons better than the league average, two worse than the league average and two right at the league average. It's interesting to note that Prince had his worst defensive season in 2010, when Ben Wallace was long gone and Rasheed Wallace had his worst defensive season as a Piston.

Something to take into account, however, is that Prince often draws the opposing team's best perimeter scorer. His job is to make things tough for them, which his long arms allow him to do, but often, those players still get their points. Noted defenders such as Bruce Bowen and Shane Battier have had seasons similar to Prince, where their defensive ratings suffered because of tough assignments.

How does Prince fare against the best SFs in the league?

OK, so the overall numbers don't look convincing if you're arguing Tay is a lock-down defender, but what about head-to-head numbers against the top-scoring wings in the league?

I went back through games each of the last six years and looked at how the top five scoring wing players in the league each season did in games against Prince. Again, this is not a definitive measure by any stretch, but it should give a decent enough sample size and stats to see if Prince is at least able to make things tough on the league's best perimeter scorers.

Analysis: Big drop in scoring, but shooting percentages are nearly identical. The scoring drop, I would guess, is largely a result of the Pistons' slow-it-up offense limiting the number of possessions in each game, taking away scoring chances.

Analysis: This year is basically a wash. With a more efficient offense under Flip Saunders, possessions in Pistons games started increasing. The top scorers averaged slightly less than their season averages vs. Tay, but shot better, largely influenced by Dwyane Wade's insanely good shooting in six Eastern Conference Finals games. Without those six games, the shooting percentage would've been pretty close to their season averages, meaning Prince wasn't particularly good or bad against them, just average.

Analysis: Wow, this is the biggest difference. Not sure how to explain it. Injuries this season to renowned Prince-killers Wade and Pierce this season may have had something to do with it, as Johnson and Carter moved into the upper-echelon, but this is just all-around an impressive defensive season. Even the Eastern Conference Finals against James, Prince held him in check in four-of-six games.

Analysis: This is easily the ugliest year defensively for Tay, although the Pistons as a whole had a pretty terrible defensive year. Not much to evaluate, Prince was simply abused by some very good players this season.

Conclusions: If we are measuring good defensive seasons for Prince by holding elite opponents to significantly less scoring averages and field goal percentages, he had two very good defensive seasons (2004 and 2007), he had three average seasons, where he did no worse than the players' regular averages (2005, 2005 and 2008) and he had one very bad defensive season (2009), which can be attributed to the fact that the team defense deteriorated as well as the fact that perhaps age slowed him a step or two.What about Prince's offense?

Another knock on Tay brought up in the comments is the perception that he disappears offensively when he's tasked with guarding an elite scorer. But do the stats show it?

Conclusions: I think it's normal to expect numbers to slip when someone has a tough defensive assignment. It's why defensive specialists like Shane Battier, Bruce Bowen and Mike James early in his career were asked to to little or nothing offensively. The first four of these years, Prince's numbers barely slipped against elite scorers. The last two, thanks largely to two bad playoff series, particularly in 2009 against Cleveland, saw some serious slippage.

Again, this could simply be attributable to worse overall team defense or it could be a sign of age. Whatever the case, it's certainly present.What does all this mean?

Other than the fact that I spent like four hours looking at random stats and crunching numbers, I'm not sure this points out anything conclusive.

I've always felt Prince has been a tad overrated as a defender, looking at these numbers, he may not have been. He had some really good defensive seasons. I've also always felt that he tends to struggle when he's guarding someone like Paul Pierce or LeBron James, but these numbers show that wasn't really the case until the last two seasons.

Prince's defense, like most perimeter defenders, is largely dependent on having good help defenders in the post who can block or change shots. The Pistons have two guys on the roster -- Kwame Brown and Ben Wallace -- who can do those things, but neither is likely to play huge minutes this season. It's conceivable Prince's defensive numbers continue to slip some.

On a great team, there's no question Prince is valuable as a solid defensive player who bothers shots and an efficient offensive player who is satisfied being a fourth option, but can also step on and score 25 points on occasion. I'm not sure how he's going to fit on a rebuilding team.

None of that is to necessarily say I think the Pistons should trade him -- no one who could step in on the current roster is as good as him right now. He's just never been asked to be anything but a role player on a veteran team before. Now, suddenly, he's an elder statesman himself, it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts to that role.